Causal Estimands for Analyses of Averted and Avertible Outcomes due to Infectious Disease Interventions

Using potential outcome notation, the adjustment of the direct and overall effects to accommodate analyses of averted and avertible outcomes due to vaccination campaigns to quantify public health impact is studied. This framework is used to interrogate the assumption that vaccine-averted outcomes via direct impact among vaccinated individuals (or vaccine-avertible outcomes via direct impact among unvaccinated individuals) is a lower bound on vaccine-averted (or -avertible) outcomes overall.